Distraction
by x-kate17-x
Summary: Just a bit of Tate-y nonsense that I ought to have posted a year ago... *grovels*


This is really old and has been sitting on my computer for 18-odd months. That's terrible, isn't it?! I originally didn't post it because I wanted to change something (possibly because I used some of this story in another one instead?) but I don't remember now and it seems a shame not to ever let it see the light of day! Let me know what you think :-)

* * *

Tony watched Kate flick her hair out of her face as she walked out of the elevator and towards her desk. She was listening keenly to whatever McGee was talking about, her body angled towards him as the hub of the bullpen overpowered his voice.

From his seat, Tony could see her soft brown eyes, framed by long eyelashes, and her hair, swinging behind her as she moved her head. And he could see her neck, smooth and pale, exposed as she tilted her head to listen to McGee's next comment.

She looked like someone had turned up the colour on her, making her eyes bright and her hair glossy and her skin glow. It was like the beginning of the Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy first got out of the tornado and everything was in vivid, sparkling technicolour. Next to her, even the bright pumpkin orange of the walls looked faded and dull.

Who decorated this place, anyway? What person in their right mind thought orange was a suitable colour for the workplace? And if that wasn't enough, they'd added splashes of bright purple too. As if poring over files and computer screens didn't give them enough of a headache. Someone clearly hated them – maybe the FBI did it. It was the kind of unnecessary, make-your-life-harder-for-no-good-reason thing they might do. Or perhaps Gibbs. But orange was a bit too cheerful for Gibbs, really. He was more likely to paint the place a sort of coffee-coloured brown.

Kate walked to her desk, waving at Tony as she passed and dropping her bag by her feet.

"McGee said he's going with Gibbs to see if Abby got any DNA from the uniform," she said, sitting down.

Abby thought he was in love with Kate. Because he gave her his bottle of water last week, or something stupid like that.

Honestly.

When he was obnoxious he got called names, and when he was nice he got accused of being in love.

He just couldn't win.

He knew he wasn't in love with her – that was just dumb. He was never in love. Not properly. But maybe – _maybe _– he liked her a little bit more than Gibbs would approve of.

And it didn't help that Abby kept dropping hints to Kate, either. Fortunately, Kate just rolled her eyes and threw her caf-pow in the bin when she mentioned it.

He loved Abby to bits, but the girl was crazy. Not just in the normal 'I wear black clothes and sleep in a coffin' way, either. This was a whole new type of crazy. A disturbing, 'Tony and Kate sitting in a tree' kind of crazy.

He preferred the old crazy, when she could be trusted to spend her sugar-highs prattling on about other people's love lives and not his.

"Hello?" Kate said, waving her hand in front of his face.

"Huh?"

She was standing right over him, waving her hand in his face. Ooh, yum, she smelt like shortbread.

"I _said_," Kate frowned. "Do you think we'll get home on time tonight?"

She said that? When? He really needed to learn to focus. Or at least, nod and mumble when he was asked a question.

"Why, got a date?" he teased.

"Yes, actually," Kate nodded, returning to her own desk. "Not that it's any of your business, anyway."

Tony scowled and stared at his computer screen. He hadn't realized she actually had a date. Probably with some educated, charming, handsome jerk.

"Who with?" he asked, despite himself.

"Who do you think? Paul."

What? That guy? The one that drove a brand new Mercedes? The one with real diamonds in his cufflinks? Who reeked of overpriced aftershave and had clearly never heard the term 'moderation' in his life?

Of course, Tony recognized the Mercedes because it was the same one he had been looking at last month. And he only knew the cufflinks were real diamonds because he had the same pair, and he recognized the 'overpriced aftershave' from the bottle he had at home.

Not the point.

"What are you going on a date with _him_ for?" Tony asked, wrinkling his nose up.

Kate glared at him.

"I went on a date with him last week. If you would have listened, you'd know. And he's a really nice guy. He took me to the theatre, and he bought me dinner. And he's intelligent and considerate. What difference does it make to you anyway?"

None. No difference at all. None, none, none. It wasn't like he was jealous that this Paul person would be hanging out with Kate and kissing her and touching her. It wasn't as if he was going to go home and think about it all night and get more and more angry about it.

That would be pathetic.

"Excuse me for being interested," Tony muttered, battering away at his keyboard.

Well, as much as you could batter a keyboard with only two fingers. It would be quicker to write his reports, to be honest. But Gibbs couldn't read his handwriting, and he said late and legible was better than on time and indecipherable.

Gibbs and McGee approached, McGee looking incredibly uncomfortable, and Tony chuckled to himself. Abby had probably made some sort of inappropriate comment in front of Gibbs, and now McGee was all embarrassed. Awww.

Kate rolled her eyes at him and flicked through the file on her desk. Tony watched her skim the page with her fingernail – so round and smooth and red. He grinned to himself. He liked red nail polish. It was sexy. He wouldn't have expected Kate to wear it though. Not to work, at least.

"Nice nail polish," he grinned, his eyes twinkling mischievously.

"Abby made me wear it," Kate replied, not looking up. "Back in a minute."

She got to her feet and walked off towards the elevator, leaving the file on her desk. Now that she had taken herself off somewhere, maybe he could actually concentrate. Gibbs said he was the distracting one, which wasn't fair. All he did was very occasionally put Kate off her work. It wasn't his fault, he liked it when she looked at him. He liked the way her eyes were all soft and brown, like a squirrel's. _Kate_ was the distracting one. She was always sitting there, chewing on her lip or swinging her legs. How was anyone meant to concentrate with her sitting there?

He'd be working super-duper hard, as always, and then Kate would open her mouth to speak, and he'd get a glimpse of her tongue as it flicked round her words. Or she'd push her hair out of her eyes and tuck it behind her ear, and he'd see her forehead.

Every move she made, he noticed. Even if he managed to control to the urge to stare at her, he noticed. He told himself it was because he was a federal agent, he was observant. But he never noticed McGee – McGee could jump and down in a clown costume, and if Kate was anywhere near, he wouldn't notice that.

Maybe it was because she was a girl. He noticed Abby. It was hard not too, really. But it was more because she was usually leaping around and waving her hands and shouting with excitement than the fact that she was female. He couldn't tell you how many freckles she had on her nose, or the direction the ends of her hair flicked when it wasn't quite dry, or how her smile reached her eyes before it reached her lips. He noticed that about Kate – if he was ever to go on a TV quiz show, 'Kate' would be his area of expertise.

"Here," Kate said, appearing again, and Tony jumped out of skin.

He watched with envy as her fingers brushed against Gibbs' as she handed him a file. Gibbs squinted as he read it, before putting it down and nodding at her.

In Gibbs World, that meant 'good work'.

Tony sat back and pretended to look at his computer screen. Really, he was watching his team members. Neither Gibbs nor McGee were staring at Kate. They didn't seem to be aware she was even in the room with them, let alone sitting a few meters away and filling the area with Kate-smell.

Obviously McGee was under threat from Abby, so he wasn't about to jump Kate in the elevator. And Gibbs had that redhead. He didn't seem the cheating kind. But _still_. They were allowed to look, weren't they? How on earth did they sit there all day and not even look at her? How was that humanly possible?

Of course, they did _look_ at her. It wasn't like they just pretended she wasn't there. But they didn't look at her like Tony did. They looked at her because staring at the floor or ceiling when you're talking to someone is just plain weird. They looked because there was no reason not too. They looked at her like they looked at everyone else, and he couldn't get his head round it. They were just… looking. How did you 'just look' at Kate? You either looked at her like she was made of stardust or you pretended she was invisible and avoided making eye contact at all costs for fear of what would happen if she caught you.

To Tony, it looked like someone had poured water over the rest of the world, so it was runny and faded. Then they'd sprayed Kate with some sort of cleaning product or something, making her shine and glimmer. She glittered in the sun, as well. Like someone had filled her up with gold dust, and it was shimmering through her skin. How did nobody else notice it? How was he the only one who saw it?

He was jealous of McGee and Gibbs, he had to admit.

He was jealous that they could talk to her without having a cloud come down over their minds so all they could do was crack immature jokes. He was jealous that they could brush against her, or hold her arm, or even walk slap-bang into her without feeling like they had just touched something exceptionally fragile and precious, that they shouldn't be getting their mucky fingerprints on. And he was jealous of the way they were totally comfortable in their own skin when she was there.

When he thought about Kate, he wished he was different. He wished he was able to hold down a relationship, because then she might look at him as something other than an immature moron.

When she smiled at McGee he wished he was cleverer. When she talked to Gibbs, he wished he was handsomer. When she hugged Ducky he wished he was funnier.

Mostly, he just wished that he could be himself and not be an idiot at the same time.

He knew things about her, too. He knew what ex-boyfriends had made her mad and which ones had made her cry. He knew her favourite bar, and her favourite food, and her favourite shoe shop. He knew where her parents lived and how many nieces and nephews she had.

He knew from observing. Kate would most likely call it eavesdropping, but it wasn't his fault his mind was trained to pick up every noise from her desk and process it into a series of Kate-moments that he stored up for the times when she wasn't there.

It wasn't his fault that he had this overwhelming urge to protect her. Protect her from Gibbs, when he was angry with her, and protect her from the bad guys they dealt with at work. And, although, it wasn't his job and it wasn't his responsibility and there was no reason for it, he wanted to protect her from sleazy jerks, as well.

Like Paul.

He'd met Paul – he was actually quite a nice guy. And if he hadn't been eyeing Kate at the time, Tony would have probably got on really well with him.

Last time Kate had a boyfriend – well, the last time Tony knew of, because Kate always refused to tell him about her private life – he'd come to pick her up from work once. And even though everyone was there – Tony and Gibbs and McGee and even Ducky – Kate hadn't told him to wait downstairs or got embarrassed and tried to move away from the group. She'd jumped up and kissed him. Right there, in front of everybody, in the middle of the office. Tony wasn't sure why he had such a strong desire to punch the guy with his hand on Kate's ass, or why seeing Kate grin at him when he put it there made him want to slap her and remind her of her catholic upbringing, even though she wasn't doing anything wrong and it wasn't any of his business, but it did. And when she broke up with him a few weeks later, he had hugged her and made sure she was okay but secretly he was overjoyed. Partly because now he could openly hate him and have an excuse, and partly because he knew she wasn't sleeping with him anymore. And a little because he got to keep touching Kate when she cried.

Still. Paul was a whole new person; he wasn't necessarily a jerk just because he liked Kate.

He probably was, though.

If Tony had Gibbs' job, he'd ban Kate from going on a date with anybody, ever. She'd have to listen, because otherwise she'd get fired.

"Tony."

"What can I do for you, Kate?" he said, looking around and seeing that Gibbs and McGee had gone. "Where are -"

"They went to MTAC. Were you asleep?"

Not asleep, no. Maybe a little out of it, thinking about Kate, but he wasn't stupid enough to go to sleep right in front of Gibbs.

"No, just distracted. What's up?"

"If you were a guy -"

"Which I am."

"Yeah. Erm, if you were on a date with me, I mean, would you prefer it if I wore a skirt or a dress?"

"If I was on a date with you, Kate, I would be far to distracted by my own happiness to even notice."

No, dammit, that wasn't what he meant to say! What he meant to say was 'how short?' 'what kind of underwear?' 'neither' or any other sexist, womanizing comment he could possibly think of.

"Oh," Kate said, squirming in her seat. "Well, erm… okay."

"Paul would, erm, probably like the dress more, though. Guys like dresses – easier to get off in a hurry."

Hopefully, that would make her wear a skirt. Not that he would have too much of an issue with Kate in a skirt, to be honest, but hey, every little helps. Anything he could do to cause Paul even the tiniest, most miniscule, momentary feeling of disappointment was worth it.

"Right," Kate nodded. "Thanks."

And now he'd embarrassed her. Way to go DiNozzo. She would get uncomfortable and awkward and ask to change teams and he wouldn't even be able to watch her type or talk or breathe anymore.

God, he loved the way she breathed. In and out. Sometimes he wished he could be made of oxygen, so Kate would breathe him into her lungs every time she walked past. But then logic took over and he realized that if he was oxygen then he wouldn't be a person so he wouldn't care whether Kate breathed him in or not.

"Uh, Tony?"

"Yeah."

"What are you doing after work?"

Truthfully, he'd be sitting at home sending voodoo death thoughts to Paul. Hopefully with several cases of beer by his side.

"Going to a bar, why?"

"Do you… do you want to come to dinner at mine instead?"

"What about Paul?"

Kate shrugged, and Tony stared at her neat, round little shoulders moving under her blouse.

"I'd rather hang out with you."

Really? Kate would rather hang out with him than handsome, rich, nicest-man-on-the-planet Paul?

"Then it's a date."

Oooh. Oops.

"No, sorry, I didn't mean to say it was a date, I just mean -" he stuttered, trying to backtrack before Kate changed her mind.

"Hey, Tony."

"Yes."

"It can be a date if you want."

Oh well. He'd already made a bigger idiot of himself than he could have possibly imagined, so he may as well be honest.

"Sounds good to me."

"Good."

Take that, Paul! Tony grinned smugly at everyone who passed, beaming with pride.

"Stop grinning," Kate hissed at him from her desk. "You look like an idiot."

He didn't care, to be honest. If it wasn't completely ridiculous and Gibbs wouldn't murder him for leaving his desk, he'd go up to the roof and paint 'I'm going on a date with Kate Todd' with glow-in-the-dark paint onto the floor, so every helicopter and plane that flew over the navy yard would see.

With a bit of luck, he could even ring Paul and give him the good news himself.


End file.
